


The First Night

by argentconflagration



Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: Amonkhet (Magic: The Gathering), Gen, Hour of Devastation (Magic: The Gathering), Post-Hour of Devastation (Magic: The Gathering), platonic but if you want to read it as romantic you have my blessing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentconflagration/pseuds/argentconflagration
Summary: As the last rays of the second sun sank below the horizon, Hazoret felt the ripple of trepidation that emerged from the mortals at her feet as they watched the darkening sky.Are we too late? Is this how the world ends?And she knew that she must be a god for her people, though she had failed them already, though her divine essence screamed with pain and fatigue. Leaning on her staff, she drew herself up to her full height, and smiled."You need not fear the setting of the second sun, my children. It will be very dark, and very cold, but it will last no longer than the dim nights you are accustomed to. We shall endure beyond this night."And so saying, Hazoret the Fervent cast her gaze toward the horizon, and led her people through the darkness.
Relationships: Hazoret & Samut (Magic: The Gathering)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The First Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CerberAsta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CerberAsta/gifts).



> This takes place just after the Hour of Devastation story, when Hazoret, having just fought and killed the Scorpion God, leads the survivors of the Hours away from the wreckage of Naktamun. I have not read War of the Spark, so this might not be canon-compliant with the novel. 
> 
> Please note, there is a moment in this fic when a child is imperiled, but she's just fine in the end!

Night was falling, a blacker night than Amonkhet had seen in sixty years. Already, Hazoret could not perceive the bodies of her brothers and sisters, lost in a swarm of gleaming lazotep.

She had never felt so alone.

Her shoulder ached and bled where her arm should have been. All along her body, gashes stung with the dark god's ichor.

She knew the hearts of her people always, and yet now, more than ever before, she understood what mortals felt when they would cry out to their god.

As the last rays of the second sun sank below the horizon, she felt the ripple of trepidation that emerged from the mortals at her feet as they watched the darkening sky.

_Are we too late? Is this how the world ends?_

And she knew that she must be a god for her people, though she had failed them already, though her divine essence screamed with pain and fatigue. Leaning on her staff, she drew herself up to her full height, and smiled.

"You need not fear the setting of the second sun, my children. It will be very dark, and very cold, but it will last no longer than the dim nights you are accustomed to. We shall endure beyond this night."

And so saying, Hazoret the Fervent cast her gaze toward the horizon, and led her people through the darkness.

*

There was a cry from the back of the group, and Sekma, a minotaur girl of fourteen, collapsed into the sand. Immediately Hazoret had her cradled in her arm, and had extended the warm glow of her aura around the girl. She could be a beacon of compassion and vitality until her people were safe. She must.

*

Hazoret's small entourage reached the main group of survivors to find that they had stopped. There were too many injured to carry on— those who still had strength could not carry them all. They had stopped in the shelter of an ancient, crumbling edifice. Isnir, Bhanut, and Hapatra walked among the wounded, providing what aid they could.

Hazoret reached out her warmth to bolster the survivors. She knelt, fearing that she would fall if she stood. She could not show weakness now, lest her people fall into despair.

*

Ptun, a naga boy of eight, cradled to his chest a khenra girl— who did not yet have words but on whose heart was written _Haqikah—_ as she cried out with parched lungs.

"We must carry on when we can," said Hazoret, though it broke her heart to urge anything more from the battered mortals around her. "We will need water and food before we can shelter for the night."

"Why should we listen to you?" The voice was from Atukh, a human plant mage of eleven years. "Everything the gods told us was a lie! Lead us no longer!"

Samut pushed her way forward from behind Hazoret. "The gods have always been true!"

Hazoret placed a finger gently on Samut's shoulder. "I thank you for your love, Samut the Tested. But Atukh speaks the truth." She bent low, pressing her head to the sand. "My children, I have failed you, and you have not failed me. I am your servant. I claim no high place of respect."

For a moment no one spoke, and then Hapatra's voice broke the silence.

"Then we move forward as equals. But we move forward. We must find water, food, and shelter quickly if we are to survive the night."

*

At last they reached a suitable place to shelter for the night. The wind had exposed the top slab of an ancient catacomb, which was pushed aside to reveal an enormous stair, large enough for Hazoret to descend unbowed. It opened into a grand hall, meant for someone of Hazoret's stature, while smaller ceremonial chambers were set into the walls, sized for mortal beings. The air inside was stale but not unpleasant, smelling of clean death and incense.

Hazoret could not stop here. At Atukh's urging, a small party set out to find water, with Hazoret as their eyes. But for all their searching, the harsh desert yielded only a muddy gully with a few stringy tubers growing in its soil.

"This will not be enough to last us through the night," said Samut.

Atukh stepped forward. "I will fix this."

By the time he had filled the channel with fat, starchy roots bobbing in clear water, he had started to lose consciousness in Hazoret's hand.

*

Gods rarely slept. They were not mortals and did not have the same needs. But as they settled down for the night in the catacomb, Hazoret's divine essence could scarcely hold up her body. She knelt, and then stretched out entirely in the hall. She lay on her side, though it might have been more comfortable to rest facing upwards. But that was a corpse's pose, and though she needed rest, she would not let her people worry it could be forever. The light of the first sun had long since faded from the horizon, and the wind that whistled eerily through the catacombs brought a chill. It would not endanger the survivors, but it would cause discomfort to a people who had never known this cold.

Most of the survivors were shivering, though some, like Samut, tried not to show it. Hazoret's heart ached, for all her people, but especially for this one, this brave loving soul who had been the first to start to break Hazoret's chains.

"Come here, honored of Hazoret."

Samut's face lit up with joy. Hazoret kept her face neutral. She knew that her mortals loved her, as surely as she loved them. No, more than. She had failed her people, but Samut had never failed her. And yet it was Samut who was a vision of elation at Hazoret's approval.

"You are cold," Hazoret said.

"I'm not," Samut said, jutting her chin upwards, but at Hazoret's affectionate gaze, she approached her god. Hazoret welcomed her into the crook of her neck, taking an odd comfort herself from the proximity. Nothing would ever again compare to the security of her siblings' presence, but perhaps this was how humans made do.

*

Hazoret stirred when Samut did. The sky was beginning to grow light with impending dawn, and the survivors could already be heard moving and talking. Hazoret made to rise and instead stumbled, her empty shoulder crashing against the floor of the hall.

"Hazoret?" cried Bhanut in alarm. She uncoiled her tail with ferocious speed and slithered to Hazoret's side.

With a more careful effort to hold herself steady, Hazoret rose to her feet. "Do not be alarmed. I am merely unaccustomed to sleep."

Bhanut bowed and returned to the chamber she had emerged from.

Samut approached Hazoret's feet and placed her hand on her skin, then quickly drew away. "I am sorry, great Hazoret, I forget my place—"

Hazoret's smile brimmed with affection. "You will forever have a place by my side, Samut."

Samut beamed at the praise, and she returned her gentle hand to Hazoret's shin. Her face quickly grew serious once again. "I worry for you once again, Hazoret. Your wounds still bleed."

And it was true, now that Hazoret turned her attention to herself. The shallower cuts the Scorpion God had inflicted had not healed over, still wet and red with blood, and giving off a faint green glow. Hazoret could not keep from flinching slightly.

"Please do not worry about me—"

"What can heal a god?"

That was the question, wasn't it? The magic possessed by the mages among them could not hope to touch Hazoret's divine essence, nor the poison of the dark god that was afflicting her. Sadly, she shook her head.

*

Haqikah was crying again. Ptun had given her water and fed her, and she had like all the others been bathed in Hazoret's vital glow, but still she was troubled. Ptun rocked her in his arms, and sang a lullaby in his high voice, but the infant's breaths were shallow, and she cried softly in pain. Hazoret approached and indicated for the boy to place the infant in her hand. The child was barely the length of her thumb, and she stroked her hair with the utmost gentleness. Haqikah was ill, Hazoret sensed, and seemed to be beyond Hazoret's divine power.

Ptun clung to his god's ankle. "Please, mighty Hazoret! I don't know what is wrong, please spare her life! I will not endure her being taken from me!"

Haqikah's breath fluttered. She seemed exhausted.

Zeal. Hazoret's divine essence was an essence of zeal. She could yet save the child.

She let something inside her fracture. With a fraction of herself, she imbued Haqikah with an endless zeal for life, a power that the illness could not exhaust.

Haqikah's next breath was stronger, and the next stronger still, great gasping breaths to take in the breath of life as she was imbued with a divine determination to live.

Hazoret shuddered, and crashed to the ground.

Her wounds glowed as the Scorpion God's poison insinuated deeper into her being. Hazoret herself was caught somewhere between sleep and waking, a half-consciousness that obscured her senses and returned her to a more primal divine awareness. She felt each one of her people who had survived the calamity, two hundred and seventy-four souls: khenra, minotaur, naga, human, aven. Each one of them loved her, from the youngest infant to ...

Samut.

Samut's love for her god was a brilliant sun, outshining all the others. For just a moment, Hazoret glimpsed Samut's power. She may have been a god, but Samut had a power Hazoret would never touch, she was a walker between worlds, and had glimpsed a sky farther away than space could reach.

"Hazoret, we love you," said Samut.

"I know, my child."

"I love you." She kissed the heel of Hazoret's hand.

And Hazoret understood.

She was a god of love. She had always been a god of love. Her divine essence was here, and it was strong. She need not suffer so long as her people were here to love her.

She breathed in, which was all the effort it took to expel the poison from her body and heal her wounds. She opened her eyes and returned to the world of the waking.

She smiled, and kissed the crown of Samut's head.

"Thank you. Do not fear. We will endure, together."


End file.
